Saturday, March 17, 2012

Mac Tonnies gets noted in a series of podcasts

Mac Tonnies gets referenced twice this week in on-line podcasts. His work comes up in William Henry's series REVELATIONS, and also in Jeff Ritzmann's and Jeremy Vaeni's podcast PARATOPIA.

On the Wednesday March 14th (2012) episode of Revelations, William Henry interviews Jay Weidner about his research into the Archons. Weidner references Mac's book The Cryptoterrestrials and shares his belief that the Archons represent a non-human presence that has shared the earth along side of us, matching some of Mac's theorizing in his posthumous book.

But, the text in the page that hosts the podcast makes some troublesome claims:

The Archons, Masters of the World

If Archons exist, who and what are they? Like Mac Tonnies and Bill Schneider, Jay Weidner is getting close to understanding this mystery, and how to identify the ones that may live among us. Just after announcing that he was close to being able to identify them, Mac died in his sleep at the age of 34. Bill Schneider has also died.

But Jay is still with us, and in this interview he tells us all he knows about the Archons. As the Nag Hammadi text warns, the Archons walk among us. They like violence and destruction. They are hungry for our suffering.

Who are they? What do they look like? WHY do they hate us so, these ancient and terrible beings who legend says live among us? Jay is far down the dangerous road of understanding the secrets of the Archons, and how to break their power over the deeply hypnotized human species...

There is an implication that I want to address in this blurb. It strongly insinuates that Mac died because he was researching the Archons. I feel this simply isn't true, I have his book The Cryptoterrestrials as a PDF, and it was easy to search. He never uses the word "Archon" in this text. I spoke to him at length about the content of this book and he wasn't truly wed to the core ideas, he wrote it as a sort of thought experiment.

The implication that Mac's death was caused by these mythic beings strikes me as exploitative.

Mac's death was a tragedy, and as far as I, or anyone in the family could tell, there wasn't anything criminal (or paranormal) involved in his passing. He had a pre-existing heart condition and he died peacefully in his own bed.

Now, despite these flaws, I quite liked the audio interview, and I recommend it highly. Jay Weidner and William Henry make for a lively interview on subjects I find fascinating.

My overall concern here isn't to be nit-picky. We (and I include myself in this) are all peering into the unknown, and there is a very real need to be as accurate and level-headed when sharing our research.

But more than that, I am concerned that Mac's work and identity remain accurate in the public's mind.

There was another incorrect point in the text that accompanied the podcast, it stated that Mac had actually seen an Archon like entity, and his sighting was the basis for the cover. I emailed both William Henry and Jay Weidner and pointed out the mistakes in the text. William replied, thanked me and corrected the sentence in question about the origin of the cover.

Jay Weidner replied too, recognized the mistakes and then he presented me with a question; I wonder what Mac would think about the Archons? I feel like I can guess, I suspect he would have been greatly intrigued by Jay Weidner's ideas. If he disagreed with anything Weidner said, he would have engaged his claims in a spirited way. Mac was, more than anything, a lively and open-minded conversationalist. Weidner is now using the term The Cryptoterrestrials in his lectures as a way to articulate a non-human presence among us, and I'm all for adding this new vocabulary to our language.

This episode of REVELATIONS is free to the public for just a few weeks, after that time you'll need to be a paying member to access this and a wealth of other audio interviews.

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Also in the podcast realm this week, Jeff Ritzmann and Jeremy Vaeni conclude their weekly PARATOPIA interview with a somewhat sensitive after-chat. They tell of a UFO sighting in Baltimore from October 25th, 2009 just a few days after Mac Tonnies' death. They had spoken about some of the details of this sighting publicly shortly after the event. But they add more details now, two and a half years later.

The sighting involved a bright light in the nighttime sky that would repeatedly blink on and off without any pattern. Mac had been on Ritzmann's mind in the previous days and he asked: "Mac, if that's you, can you wink the thing on again?" And instantly the unknown light in the sky seemed to respond by winking back on. Ritzmann isn't exactly sure why he made that comment, he says that something just correlated in that instant.

Both the hosts review this event in great detail, and they do NOT think that Mac was aboard any UFO above Baltimore. They speculate that the phenomenon was reacting to their emotions and mindset in that moment in a decidedly trickster like retort.

You need to be a paying member to listen to the after-chat to hear their re-telling of this sighting. Or, you can pay a one-time $1.25 fee for the single episode.

Mike, this does strike a red flag as far as William Henry's creditability with telling fair representation to whatever topic he is reviewing or educating one on. It does read as if something paranormal happened to them and I am sure that is the point, to suck you into listening, rather than really being objective and revealing a particular theory. I found his ideas about the seraphim and the Milky Way Galaxy interesting, but just that interesting. I have listened carefully to some of his broadcasts and others where I have been drawn in by the hook of fear which dangled waiting to be taken as bait. Too bad as there is so much as you said we all don't understand, it would be nice if we could trust one another's research or intent and come to an understanding. But as you mentioned you need to be level-headed and as accurate as you can be given the nature of such incredible possibilities. Too bad about Mac Tonnies, I have never heard of him before reading some of your posts. I am curious to read his work, but a little afraid to as well. See how well his (W.H.) introduction worked! Maybe I will give Revelations a listen to.

I have a hard copy of Mac's book"The Cryptoterrestrials" and have read it and I don't recall him mentioning Archons either.I also have Jay Weidner's DVD about "Kubrick's Odyssey" while making "The Shining" and I love it.So if Jay is using Mac's "Cryptoterrestrials" definition in his lectures I see that as a great legacy from Mac's work.And I have to agree with you Mike when you say,"The implication that Mac's death was caused by these mythic beings strikes me as exploitative".

Actually I didn't ask that in jest at all. I don't know why I said that, other than here's a really weird sighting going on and he'd understandably been on my mind all weekend. Something just correlated for me in that instant.

Geez William Henry's intro is really sensationalistic isn't it? He seems like I nice guy but that intro is tacky, sensationalistic, and exploitative.... not to mention totally unnecessary. Note to William Henry-- you don't need to be sensationalistic to get listeners. It's interesting enough as it is. All the sensationalism does is detract from your credibility.

Everyone else has covered the misuse of Mac's name and ideas here as well as I could, but I also wanted to mention another misuse or half truth that bothered me in the William Henry interview.

Both Henry and Weidner mention Robert Monroe. Monroe wrote Journeys Out of the Body, Far Journeys and Final Journey, all books on his out of body experiences in physical and spiritual realms. The idea that Henry and Weidner reference from his work is called "loosh", a name for an abstract energy being taken from humanity and sent somewhere else that Monroe could not conceive of at the time. This was a passing and temporary concept mentioned part way through his second book, Far Journeys. The idea of loosh was very quickly replaced as Monroes' experiences developed and changed through further experiences. The final analysis of loosh in no way reflects a gnostic or demiurgic siphon. Loosh became for him an experiential energy spectrum being transmitted to our greater selves and identities beyond the Earth reality.

I have seen Monroe's writing and experiences misrepresented in this way on many occasions, yet I don't really understand why. He wasn't at all coy or misleading about it in his work.

Thank you wildrote! I was just logging in here to point out the same thing you did about Robert Monroe's work. i've read Mr. Monroe's works in depth over many years and was struck as well by the inaccurate, sensational, convenient way these guys used Mr. Monroe's concept of 'loosh' in this interview.

As you say, Mr. Monroe is quite straightforward in his writing, it's hard to see how this could be an honest mistake. If it was just a mistake, this doesn't say much for the quality of Mr. Weidner's research.

Mike C!, here's a synch for you - the last comment i left on your site was in the interview you did with Rosemary Ellen Guiley. I talked about part of my NDE, where helpful non-humans instructed me in how to hide my light within the shushumna in order to avoid it attracting/being slurped up by 'negative' beings.

Imagine my surprise when you linked to this Revelations podcast wherein they discuss the same energetic practices, used for the same purposes, and with some of the same terminology (the shushumna).

My husband even noted that they were discussing this - he's not big on any para-whatever, but i was listening and he was around. He piped up, "Hey, Leslie Temple Thurston talks about the shushumna too" (i sat with Ms. Temple Thurston for a few years in the 1990's, many years after my NDE).

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